The Reverand's 33rd Annual Oscar Preview!

Hello friends, the Reverend here. With Oscar season upon us, Brian asked me if I could come up with a little something-something for his worldwide Blog that would inform/educate the commenters about the upcoming awards show. Since I owed Brian a favor, I told him that I would do an Oscar preview filled with predictions, fun pictures, and a fun little bonus section at the end.* Have I seen a lot of these movies? Yes. Have I seen all of these movies? No. But who cares! So here ya go, "The Reverend's 33rd Annual Oscar Preview!"

*Note: Actually Brian owed me a favor for putting me in a TBD category for his upcoming wedding nuptials for what seemed like 13 years. I hope he enjoys the set of coffee mugs that I am getting him. And I am spelling his name wrong on them too! Bryan and Kait in 2008!

Best Director

Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood), Joel and Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men), Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton), Jason Reitman (Juno), and Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)

Who should win: Toss up between P.T. Anderson and Joel and Ethan Coen

Who will win: P.T. Anderson/Joel and Ethan Coen


I know, you all hate me already. This is the first category and I already copped out by not picking a winner. But here's the thing, there SHOULD be ties allowed in the Oscars. Here me out now. There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men both are amazing, outstanding, incredible, *superlative, superlative, superlative* movies (foreshadowing!!!) and their directors deserve the recognition. Also, both Anderson and the Coen brothers have their fair share of disappointment (but nothing like Scorsese's constant snubs). Anderson got shafted in 2000 for not even being nominated for Magnolia (won by American Beauty) and the Coen brothers got the stiff end in 1997 for Fargo (won by The English Patient which will go down as one of the worst Oscar winning films in history). So I feel that the Academy owes both Anderson and the brothers Coen an apology and a gold statue. It's unfortunate for first time nominees Gilroy, Reitman, and Schnabel that they have to be in the same categories as aforementioned 3 geniuses but such is life. Bonus note: Thankfully, Sean Penn will NOT be able to give an anti-George Bush/Iraq War/Republican speech. My check is in the mail Academy…excellent job!

Best Actress in a Supporting Role

Cate Blanchett (I'm Not There), Ruby Dee (American Gangster), Saoirse Ronan (Atonement), Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone), and Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton)

Who should win: Tilda Swinton

Who will win: Cate Blanchett


If you thought Swinton was a witch (literally and figuratively) in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, well then you haven't seen anything until you see Michael Clayton! Swinton is ruthless, cut-throat, and devious as all hell in this movie. She scares the hell out of me and makes me even more scared of females with power than I already am (I'm looking at you Hillary Clinton!). But alas, Swinton will not win. Dee (the oldest nominee), Ronan (the youngest nominee), and Ryan (the uber-hottest nominee) are all fine and dandy in their roles but the Academy will give the award to Blanchett for her portrayal of Bob Dylan. It's a known fact that the Academy rewards actors/actresses that go outside their comfort zones and take on roles that are in the realm of mental retardation, homosexuality, evil dictators, ugly people, etc (I'm looking at you Forrest Gump, Capote, Last King of Scotland, North Country, etc) so Blanchett's portrayal of a man will obvious score big points for her. Blanchett is a great actress and it shows with 5 past Oscar nominations to her credit. She will add this hardware to her mantle (do celebrities even have mantles?) to sit along side with her Oscar win from The Aviator.

Best Actor in a Supporting Role

Casey Affleck (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Charlie Wilson's War), Hal Holbrook (Into the Wild), and Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton)

Who should win: Javier Bardem

Who will win: Javier Bardem


I'll confess something. I do not understand the difference between "Lead Actor" and "Supporting Actor." Are there certain rules that have to be met to be considered the lead? Do you have to have a certain amount of lines? The same goes with the Emmy's. These need to be explained better. But I digress, it's been wonderful career for Holbrook, Casey Affleck is finally stepping out of his big brother's shadow, Hoffman is one of the greatest actors of this generation, and Wilkinson is lost in hoopla over George Clooney and Tilda Swinton. But it's Bardem who played the best character and has left audiences everywhere thankful that they have not stolen some of his precious drug money. Bardem had this award locked up once people saw his hitman character's hair, expressionless face, and limp in the preview for No Country for Old Men. Bardem's character will haunt your dreams after you see this movie. His monotoned voice will send chills down your body. This movie will also jump start his career (although some will argue that he has been here since Before Night Falls in which he earned a nomination in 2000).

Best Actress in a Leading Role

Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth: The Golden Age), Julie Christie (Away from Her), Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose), Laura Linney (The Savages), and Ellen Page (Juno)

Who should win: Ellen Page

Who will win: Laura Linney


I'll admit right now that I've never seen either of Blanchett's Elizabeth films. I also have never heard of Christie and Cotillard's films. So to be fair, I went to the Internet to do some research on the movies. Yes friends, the Internet can be used for things other than Facebooking, MySpacing, and adult entertaining. According to most sites/critics, Blanchett's performance in her first Elizabeth role (1998) was much better than her second go around. Christie's portrayal of a woman suffering from Alzheimer's is considered the best work of her career (even better than her 1965's Darling in which she won a best actress Oscar at the ripe old age of 24). Cotillard's portrayal of singer/legend Edith Paif will put her on the map of "stars to come" but the general public just does not flock to see foreign biopics (except for Evita). So it comes down to the young star Ellen Page and the incredibly talented Laura Linney. Page showed that she was a talented actress in 2005's Hard Candy but she has become a superstar thanks to Juno. Her candid dialogue, her whimsical humor, and her "she's the girl next door/I totally want to be best friends with her" quality should win her the Oscar. However, Linney's role as Wendy Savage impressed the voters more. Linney has had an amazing career and her tag-team effort with Philip Seymour Hoffman will land her the Oscar. Throughout this movie, you feel as if Linney could be your own sister. You know, the one you bicker with, laugh with, and cry with. Hoffman is outstanding in his role but Linney steals the show. Do to the fact that this storyline (siblings going home to care for their ailing father) might hit close to home with a lot of baby boomers in the Academy, Linney most likely will win. Page's time will come (hopefully in the near future) but for right now, Linney is the one to beat.

Best Actor in a Leading Role

George Clooney (Michael Clayton), Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will be Blood), Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street), Tommy Lee Jones (In the Valley of Elah), and Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises)

Who should win: Daniel Day-Lewis

Who will win: Daniel Day-Lewis


Every year when the nominees are announced; there is obviously hoopla over who got snubbed and who got lucky. When I saw the nominees for the Best Actor I immediately did a double take. Actually, I did a double take and said, "What the *beep?*" Don't get me wrong, Tommy Lee Jones is one of my favorite actors of all time, but he did not deserve a best picture nod. The same goes with Viggo Mortensen and his role of a ruthless mobster. In fact, I think Mortensen has officially been typecasted as "that guy who can play a hitman/mobster/guy who cares a sword or gun." Mortensen was overrated in History of Violence and the same goes with Eastern Promises. I also just don't get the Academy's infatuation/lovefest with Johnny Depp. In fact, I might be the only person in the world to think that the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is one of the biggest jokes in movie history. Depp's early career in Edward Scissorhands, What's Eating Gilbert's Grape, and Blow are all movies that he rightfully should have been nominated. Since Blow, Depp's work has steadily gone downhill and is only surviving because teenage girls flock to see if he happens to take his shirt off. The fact that the Academy did not include Ryan Gosling (Lars and the Real Girl) and Denzel Washington (American Gangster) really ticked me off the most. Maybe the Academy feels that Gosling will eventually win an award and maybe they are tired of Denzel. Regardless, both deserved nominations. So that leaves the list down to a battle of two men. George Clooney has once again shown that he can play pretty much any role. Throughout this movie, I kept thinking to myself, "Are we sure this is NOT a John Grisham book?" From now on, anytime I read a Grisham book, I am going to picture Clooney as the main character. But alas, this award will go to Daniel Day-Lewis who in my mind is the GREATEST actor of the past 15 years and also the most UNDERRATED actor of the past 15 years (if this is even possible). DDL is so good that he retired for 5 years until he was begged by Martin Scorsese to come back and be in his film, Gangs of New York. DDL has one Oscar already but should have two more. He lost out in 1994 (In the Name of the Father) to Tom Hanks in Philadelphia and in 2003 (Gangs) to Adrien Brody's The Pianist which will go down as one of the biggest jokes in Oscar history. Daniel Day-Lewis' portrayal of oil tycoon/maniac Daniel Plainview left audiences scared, confused (me), and thirsty for milkshakes. Lewis has the one locked up and rightfully so.

Best Picture

Atonement, Juno, Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men, and There Will be Blood

Who should win: Juno

Who will win: No Country for Old Men


And now for the granddaddy of them all! They save the best of last for the awards show and I of course will do the same. Every so often, very special years come around to where we are clueless to who will win Best Picture because there is more than one movie that rightfully deserves the title. 2008 will go down as one of the closest races in Oscar history. I am confident in saying that 2008 will join 1990 (best year ever), 1991, 1994, 1995 (second best year ever), and 1997 as the cream of the crop for Best Picture nominations. Please note that I was born in 1982 so, like Jesus, everything before I was born was not really that important. The only downfall to this year's race is that American Gangster was not in place of Atonement. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy watching Keira Knightley as much as the next guy, but it did not deserve to be in the Best Picture category. Another problem is that Michael Clayton absolutely has no chance at winning which is unfortunate because it's a good movie that in any other year would probably be the front runner. So it's down to Juno, NCFOM, and TWBB. Since the people who know and love me know that I'm an obsessive gambler, I will set odds of each picture winning. I would say that NCFOM is about a 34% favorite, Juno at 33%, and TWBB at 32%, Clayton at 1%, and Atonement at 0%. I personally would love to see Juno win because comedies never get any recognition by the Academy. Last year Little Miss Sunshine was the little engine that could…err…couldn't and I think this year Juno can win against all odds (cue Phil Collins). The dialogue in Juno is fantastic and it reminds me so much of Kevin Smith movies (who someday will rightfully be rewarded with an Oscar). The actors/actresses were perfectly cast and I cannot even fathom anyone else in those respective roles. Every year, I watch the winner of Best Picture (either before or after the ceremony) and see if I say, "That was the best movie I've seen in a long time." After I saw Juno I immediately wanted to hide under my seat to see if I could sneak into the next showing but since I was running low on Jujyfruits, I decided against it. I came out of There Will be Blood excited because it was a fantastic movie, but it was a little too weird (this coming from the guy that loved Vanilla Sky). It was everything I was told to be prepared for; good writing, good acting, and good directing. However, there is just something missing that I cannot put my finger on. Like I said above, Daniel Day-Lewis is the greatest actor of the past 15 years and he definitely carries this movie but no one else really sticks out. And it is because of that point that I feel that No Country for Old Men will take home the statue because of its ensemble. Tommy Lee Jones' narration, Javier Bardem's menacing character, Josh Brolin's breakout performance (although he WAS in The Goonies!!! and the Coen Brothers again blowing my mind with their storytelling abilities, camera angles, and screenshots all point to this movie winning it all. I will not be angry if Juno doesn't win nor if There Will be Blood wins because they both deserve it. I am looking forward to the ceremony not because I want to see what everyone is wearing, but I want to see if Jack Nicholson is drunk again.

Eight movies you need to see in 2008 or Brian will revoke your commenting privileges

Why 8? Because I said so!

1.) The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (May 16). The first "big kid" book I ever read was The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and I was immediately transfixed. I read all of the Narnia books in a matter of weeks. Allow C.S. Lewis to take you on an adventure to a magical land and forget about life for awhile!

2.) The Dark Knight (July 18). Christian Bale reprises his role as Batman and faces off against the Joker, played by the late Heath Ledger. After this film, Bale will be considered the best actor to play the caped crusader, topping Michael Keaton.

3.) Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (May 22). First off, can you all believe Harrison Ford is 65 years old!!! He looks fantastic! If I look like him at 65 (If I even make it to 65) I think my wife will be very happy. Anyway, it's been almost 20 years since we last saw Indy and if you aren't excited about that, well then you have no sense of adventure.

4.) Quantum of Solace (November 7). Daniel Craig is back as the blond haired, blue eyed James Bond. Before I saw Casino Royale, I thought Craig was a terrible choice to portray 007. However, he impressed me immensely and will do so again as he is back seeking to avenge the death of his first and only true love, Vesper.

5.) The Time Traveler's Wife (late November). The book has been mentioned on this blog before and I will reiterate what has been said before, READ THIS BOOK! It's fantastic and finally will be made into a movie. It doesn't hurt that the beautiful Rachel McAdams plays the lead, Clare Abshire.

6.) Burn after Reading (September 26). Joel and Ethan Coen are back and possibly better than ever??? They bring with them an all-star cast that includes George Clooney (dreamy), Brad Pitt (dreamier), and John Malkovich (uhh...bald?). This movie is about two average men who have the unfortunate luck of coming across some highly classified CIA material and are forced to go on the run (sounds like "Chuck"). I always enjoy CIA movies because they make me thankful that I'll never be shot in the head by the government…I hope.

7.) Choke (August 28). Sam Rockwell is currently one of my favorite actors, ever since I saw Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (again…CIA!). Rockwell is the lead character who goes around faking that he is choking, gets saved by a Good Samaritan, and then cons his way into their lives/money. The film did wonderfully at Sundance and look for this to be a darkhorse in next year's Oscar race.

8.) Forgetting Sarah Marshall (May 30). Looks like I'll be at the movie theater 3 weekends in a row come May. Judd Apatow continues his hot streak by releasing a romantic comedy featuring the underrated Jason Segel who has just been dumped by his drop dead gorgeous girlfriend Kristen Bell and now must pick up the pieces and move on. Hilarity ensues as it always does with Apatow movies.

Well that's all for me. Thanks for the time and please, feel free to comment. I can take the criticism…sort of. And since this is a LOST blog first and foremost, I will let you know that my picks for the "Oceanic 6" are Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, Sun, and Sayid. And Juliet is the one in the coffin. Until next time, Reverend Scott…OUT!

"Eggtown" Instant Reactions!

Brian's Two Word Review: Too easy.

Even without my episode preview, I have to think that 75% of the viewing audience saw the "surprise ending" coming a mile away. From the start of the episode they started dropping hints about Kate and Aaron, and by the time the ending rolled around it was pretty obvious that the final scene of the episode would be Kate saying his name.

Having said that, it was a pretty nice repreive from the past two weeks and their mind-blending finales that left our collective heads spinning... and continuing in the pedal-to-the-floor mentality of this season, we still had a TON of developments.

Miles. Quite simply, he's in it for the money. He's working for a rich and powerful company who is hell-bent on finding Ben (and most likely the secrets he has about the Island), but Miles could care less about Ben, the Island, or the secrets. It makes you wonder what alterior motives the other Freightors have...

Faraday. One of the most puzzling scenes of the episode involved the game of Memory between Faraday and Charlotte. So - Faraday is losing his memory ever since he's been on the Island? He's clearly some weirdly genius science guy - but he can't remember three cards? Is this the funky electromagnetism wrecking havoc? Why isn't anyone else affected by this?

Most importantly, WHY IS HE SHOWING UP IN DESMOND'S FLASHBACK/FORWARD as we saw in the episode preview for next week?! I have a sneaking suspicion we're going to have another trippy "what the hell is going on" episode with Desmond next week where we have no idea if it's a flashback, a flashforward, time traveling, or an alternate future (actually, we can now firmly scratch that last concept out - thankfully - check out this article: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20179125,00.html )

Four Years. Speaking of timeing, Kate's mom confirmed that it had been four years between the crash and the trial. Since you have to assume the trial would have happened immediately after the return of the Oceanic Six, that puts their return around September 2008. Since Jack is still all normal and clean-cut at this time, that probably puts the crazy bearded Jack flashforward at least a year later... something tells me that when Lost wraps up in 2010, the show is going to be in 2010 as well - meaning it kept up with the passage of time throughout its existence, making it (unbelievably) taking place is "present day" for a span of six years.

This also puts Aaron at about five years old during the Season Three finale scene - making him old enough to be aware that his mom was gone... explaining Kate's "he'll be wondering where I am" comment. Hooray for no Sawyer / Hurley / Ben marriage!

Aaron. So do we now count Aaron as a member of the Oceanic Six? After all, the previews for this episode sorta promised that the next member would be revealed... but I think most of us thought he wouldn't count since he wasn't born when Flight 815 crashed. If Kate's trying to protect his identity by passing him off as her own (which is up for debate), she would probably tell people he was conceived on the Island - making him a non-member of the Oceanic Crew. But if he is included, that means we've only got one slot left.

Claire. And it isn't for Claire. I don't know how or why, but Claire clearly heads for the big outback in the sky before the rescue of the Oceanic Six... and however it happened, it seems like Jack was somewhat responsible (or could have prevented it) based on how afraid he was to see Aaron. You'd also assume at this point, he knows that Claire was his pseudo-sister, and Aaron is his pseudo-nephew, which probably makes the pain all the worse.

Island. There were two HUGE bombshells during Jack's testimony, with the first being the admission that the Oceanic Six were stranded on a desert Island. However, since Jack is clearly unable to return to the Island, I'm guessing Lost Island hasn't become a tourist attraction yet - but how? I'm guessing that the Oceanic Six were taken to some "fake Island" in the general area before they were rescued, and it came complete with fake makeshift shelters and signs that they had "lived" there for a few months... all part of the massive plot to keep the Island secret.

Oceanic Eight. Last but certainly not least, did you catch Jack mention that "only eight of us survived the crash", but "two died in the water"? Why mention this? Wouldn't it be a lot cleaner to just say "only six of us survived the crash"? This might have just been a detail to make the story more plausible (and it's clear that the Oceanic Six have all practiced this story extensively!), but it might also mean that the Oceanic Six come back with two bodies - perhaps casualties of their escape, perhaps bodies that they felt needed a proper burial or return to their families... but it confirms that even though six of our Survivors make it back to the "real world", it's not as though all the rest are just hanging out on the Island... at least two more are going to die.

Phew. I might not even need an analysis after all that.

Discuss!

http://facethewoods.com/lost/index.php?topic=257.0

Lost - "Eggtown"

Episode Title: “Eggtown”


Brian's Deeper Meaning Guess: Before we start this week, here’s a scary thought – we’re past the halfway point of the current run of new episodes of Lost. The schedule for the remainder of the strike interrupted season has finally been revealed, and it’s looking like we get new Lost episodes for the next four weeks, ending on March 13 (coincidentally, my birthday). Then, we get six new episodes starting on April 24 (I’m still working out how I’m going to Blog from my honeymoon, but I’ll figure something out).

Also – it looks like Lost is going to get bumped back to 10:00 pm in April, to allow room for Grey’s Anatomy to return at 9:00. Sad – I was really enjoying the 9:00 Lost hour, since it allowed plenty of time for Instant Reactions and got me to bed at a decent hour. But the good news is that we get 13 total episodes of Lost this season, instead of the mere 8 that were completed pre-strike… and the Lost writers have confirmed that this season’s storyline is going to end the same place it was always planned, they just have to get there faster than originally intended. For me, this was always the biggest concern. Clearly, they had a well thought out plan for how seasons four, five, and six should go – and I would have hated to see those storylines altered because of a strike.

With that administrative stuff out of the way, let’s get back to this week’s Kate-centric episode “Eggtown”.

A quick Google search reveals 44,300 results… all of them referring to this episode of Lost, none of them providing any insight of any other use of “Eggtown” on the Internet. Not a good start.

Changing the search to “Egg Town” reveals a few Easter-related websites, along with some notes about Winlock, WA (named Egg Town because there is apparently a giant egg statue by their railroad tracks). While there is always a chance that this is where Kate spends some time in her flashforward (it’s only 75 miles from Portland, another Lost city in the Pacific Northwest!), it seems to be a stretch.

So what is Eggtown?

Since I’m forced to make an educated guess (between last week and this week, it’s getting tougher and tougher), I’d say that Eggtown is none other than the Others’ Barracks. I don’t want to get too fifth grade sex ed on you, but we all know that Ben was obsessed about Others having babies the same way that you and I are obsessed about Lost. As the female egg is a critical component in the process of creating a baby (gross!), you could see where a nickname like Eggtown might spring up to describe a little town where there is such a strong focus on pregnancy. Simple enough – but there’s more.

There was a scene from last week’s episode that I intentionally left out of my “The Economist” analysis, because I thought it was more relevant to bring up this week – the touching scene between Sawyer and Kate inside an Eggtown house (where they discuss how long they can “play house”). It was subtle, especially with the way Sayid hinted at a prisoner exchange, but the fact that Kate didn’t return with Sayid may indicate that after a brief flirtation with Jack (and Team Rescue), she’s decided to put in some quality time with Sawyer (and Team Island).



Which brings us to a very important point – and one that might further the “Eggtown” deeper meaning: Kate might be pregnant.

The audience shouldn’t forget that it seemed like even after their horizontal cage action (actually, they seemed more vertical), Kate and Sawyer seemed to be hooking up fairly regularly back at the Beach – and I didn’t see a lot of Dharma Birth Control lying around. It’s entirely possible that Kate has a small, sarcastic name creating baby growing inside her, and that the “Eggtown” name means something a little bit more to her in particular.

Note that I said “possible” – as you see in the episode breakdown below, there’s an entirely different way this episode might play out…


ABC Description: Kate's need to get information out of the hostage may jeopardize her standing with Locke -- as well as with Sawyer. Guest starring are Ken Leung as Miles, Jeremy Davies as Daniel Faraday, Rebecca Mader as Charlotte, Shawn Doyle as Duncan Forrester, Susan Gibney as Melissa Dunbrook, Traber Burns as judge, Fred Q. Collins as bailiff, Beth Broderick as Diane Jansen, Tania Kahale as nanny and William Blanchette as child.


Episode Breakdown: Can I just say again how much I love the lack of reveals from the ABC descriptions this season? Do you remember a few seasons ago when the on-Island action was slow and yet we’d still get a paragraph describing how Hurley and Sawyer were going to play ping pong? Nowadays the story is flying by at breakneck pace, yet we still are only given a few words about what’s actually happening. I love the surprise.

Having said that, let me try to over-analyze this episode so that I can attempt to ruin any surprise for you.

Our one sentence this week confirms that the action will remain solely focused on Team Island, where Kate remained after last week’s trip with Sayid and Miles. However, once again there is the question of which “hostage” the description is referring to – Locke now has both Ben and Miles stashed away in different parts of the Barracks, and both would seem to be good candidates to have a wealth of information that Kate would care about.

On the one hand, Ben seems to be the man with the plan, the one who knows exactly who the Freightors are, what they want, and if they hold the key to Kate finding a way off the Island.

On the other hand, Miles would be able to fill Kate in on the “real world” perspective of the crash, why they are looking for Ben, and what’s happened on her favorite soaps over the past three months.

So you have to ask yourself, how could getting information out of either person jeopardize her standing with Locke and Sawyer? Wouldn’t both Locke and Sawyer want to gain the same information as well? The only logic I can apply here is that Kate had ample time to get information out of Miles over the past two episodes, since she spent pretty much two straight days with him, which makes Ben the more likely candidate for Kate to interrogate.

The only way I could see her need to interrogate Ben as causing unrest among Locke and Sawyer would be if she had to go behind their backs in order to talk to him – maybe breaking into his “jail cell” in the Barracks, maybe accidentally letting him out, or maybe intentionally letting him out in exchange for information.

Why would she do any of this? I have no idea – but that’s the only thing I can come up with.

So we get one lousy sentence and one lousy analysis of a sentence? This episode preview is a pretty big letdown so far – but luckily there is some very interesting stuff in the guest star list!


Helicopter. Scanning through the list of guest stars, the first thing that should jump out at you is who is NOT there. No Frank. Miles, Faraday, and Charlotte are all listed – but Frank is conspicuously absent this week. And no Frank means no Desmond and no Sayid. Before you start freaking out thinking that the helicopter crashed while trying to leave the Island, I should mention that next week’s episode is a Desmond-centric affair, so it’s clear that they at least survive another week. But the lack of their inclusion in this episode means one of three things:

Frank didn’t follow the same bearing out of the Island as he did coming into the Island (against Faraday’s warning), and they’re currently flying around in circles, bouncing around the electromagnetic Bubble surrounding the Island, lost in time for a bit.

This week’s episode takes place during the same timeframe from when Sayid left the Barracks and when he and Desmond left on the helicopter, bringing us up to speed on what happened with Kate / Miles after he left.

The writers decided to build suspense this week and focus heavily on the helicopter ride / arrival at the Freighter next week, much like we had some “split storylines” last season between Alcatraz and the Main Island.

The first option is the most exotic, the second is the most “Lost-style” way to do it, and the third is the most logical, so take your pick – but don’t get your hopes up on finding out too much more about the Funky Time / Funky Space / Bubble / Freightor’s True Intentions for at least another week.


Diane. The other name in the guest star list that should sound familiar to you is Diane Jansen, better known as “Kate’s Mom”. Since this week’s episode is clearly a flashforward (more on that later), we should remind ourselves of where we last left ol’ Diane… and it was on her death bed.



If you recall, the most recent (timeline-wise) of Kate’s flashbacks showed Kate in the hospital, visiting her mother who was seemingly dying of cancer. Diane then screamed, forcing Kate to run away – which eventually led to the death of Kate’s boy-toy Tom.

For me, this makes is pretty puzzling that Diane appears in this episode. However, since this episode clearly takes place right after the arrival of the Oceanic Six back in the “real world” (as evidenced by the trail of Kate for her pre-crash crimes), I guess it’s possible that Diane hung on for a few more months and lived to see her daughter return from the Island and stand trial.

(Note: fans of the “alternate reality” theories will likely point out that this is a future where Kate’s mom didn’t have cancer at all, but I don’t buy it.)

For me, a far more intriguing twist would feature Ben offering to cure the cancer from Kate’s mother, just like he did for Juliet, in return for something. Could we have back-to-back weeks where it is revealed that one of the Oceanic Six is in cahoots with Ben? It would offer a plausible explanation for who the “he” is that Kate referenced during her meeting with Jack during the Season Three finale. In fact, you could even take this theory as far as using it to explain how Kate was able to avoid lengthy jail time for her numerous crimes – perhaps she received both “prizes” from Ben (or Dharma / Hanso / Widmore) in exchange for keeping the Island secret or performing some other equally important act.


Child. That brings us to the end of the guest list, to by far the most interesting guest star of the week – one that opens up a world of possibilities for where Kate’s storyline is headed – the generically named “Child”.

Of course my immediate thought was “this is Kate and Sawyer’s love child! Kate was pregnant after all, escaped the Island, delivered the baby, and is living happily ever after!” But that thought bothered me for two reasons.

First, that would mean that every main female character on the show (from Season One) would have been pregnant or dead at some point in the show – which seems a little unlikely, and a little too repetitious for a show as smart as Lost.

Second, why would they name him / her “Child”? If it really was Kate’s jail-baby, wouldn’t they simply list the child’s name? That would actually keep it much more of a secret than listing “Child”, since “James” (the most logical name for Kate and Sawyer’s hypothetical baby) could be anyone in the flashforward.

Then I had an even crazier idea – what if the naming of the character of “Child” was meant to keep the surprise, and the character is actually someone we already know – like Aaron?



Remember how “important” Aaron was supposed to be back during the first season of Lost? The Psychic (who may or may not have been a fraud) was adamant that Claire be the one to raise him, the Others (and CFL) seemed to be obsessed with him, and even the show’s producers hinted that Aaron would be a very important character to the show.

Ever since then, he’s pretty much been an annoying crying baby in the background, providing a prop for Claire and Charlie scenes over the past two seasons. His importance was seemingly dismissed as being mistaken for Walt’s importance to the Others, and could have easily simply been tied to the Others’ obsession with making babies since they were unable to do so.

But what if Aaron really is important? It’s a little “Terminatory”, but what if Aaron really is some critical future piece to the battle for the Island between the Others and the Freightors? What if Jacob knew his importance and arranged for our Oceanic Six to find a way off the Island for the sole purpose of Aaron being taken with them, so that he could grow up, come back to the Island, and return it to the Others? After all, the biblical Aaron is the great-great-grandson of Jacob – who’s to say that Aaron isn’t somehow tied to the Hanso family through his deadbeat dad who ran away before he was born?

Even if you don’t want to go down that path, it’s also logical to see a scenario where Claire dies (and Brian rejoices!), and Kate is left as the most logical person to raise baby Aaron. Heck, maybe Claire and Jack realize that they are siblings, and Jack realizes that he has some duty to raise this baby – making sure it secures a seat (or lap) onboard the vessel that carries the Oceanic Six off the Island. Then he slips into crazy-town and begins dabbling in the drugs again, forcing Kate to step in and raise the child.


Any of these scenarios are extremely likely in my mind. The best part is, they would all accomplish two things – get rid of the storyless and annoying character of Claire on Lost (and probably save Sawyer / Desmond from “Death Watch” for a few weeks!), save us from the “Kate is pregnant with Sawyer’s baby” storyline (which I liked the first time I saw it – when it was called “Sun is pregnant with Jin’s baby”), and provide a simple explanation for who the “he” was that Kate referenced during her airport meeting with Jack last season!

So, in the end, it seems as though the “Eggtown” title might be trying to intentionally mislead us into thinking that Kate is pregnant – when in reality she is far from it, but is revealed to be an adoptive mother in her flashforward this week.

Pretty sneaky, Lost.

http://facethewoods.com/lost/index.php?topic=256.0

"The Economist" Analysis!

This week was one of those rare occasions where I actually had to go back and re-watch the most recent episode of Lost before I started blogging. It’s probably hard to believe given how much I blab about each episode, but most of the time I just watch each episode once, with whoever is in the Delta House at the time, and then rely on the screen shots I pull from Lost-Media to remind me about what happened in each episode.

But not this week.

There were a few moments that were had such potentially huge implications on both the episode and the series that I wanted to make sure I got them in my head just right before I started writing. So, with two viewings of “The Economist” under my belt, I think I’m as ready as I’m ever going to be to start analyzing.

Let’s do it.

Jacob. But before we get to the really heady stuff, just like last week let’s start off with the relatively easy topic of Jacob again – more specifically, with his cabin. Locke’s inability to find the cabin seems to indicate that it really isn’t some physical object that just anyone can stumble upon. Ironically, this fits perfectly with what Ben told us from the very start. To paraphrase:

“No one speaks to Jacob but me.”
“No one knows where Jacob is but me.”
“Jacob is not someone that you visit, Jacob summons you.”

However, we’ve since seen that Jacob actually talked to Locke as well, but maybe he’s still not too keen on unannounced visitors, especially when they are with a handful of other “less worthy” individuals, as Locke was this week. I still think that Locke is Jacob’s “chosen one”, the one that will “help him” – but that he wasn’t willing to reveal himself to a group of people… especially when someone in that group happens to be a Freightor.

But – the big thing that this showed was that the circle of volcanic ash around the cabin from last season’s “The Man Behind the Curtain” really isn’t acting as a prison for Jacob like we all assumed. It now appears that Jacob is able to pick up his cabin and leave the circle when necessary – which means that Ben probably doesn’t really have any power over Jacob at all.

The other weird thing is that everything we’ve seen over the last season and a half seemed to indicate that Ben had fallen out of favor with the Island – everything from him having the tumor on his spine (when Others allegedly don’t get sick) to Jacob speaking to Locke in the cabin rather than to Ben. However, as we saw this episode, Future Ben (we should probably call him “Present Ben”, but that would make everything on Island be “Past Ben” and that’s just too confusing) is still 100% fighting for the Island – which would seem that he’s on the same side as Jacob in the end. After all, they both want the same thing – to destroy the Freightors and protect the Island.

Maybe Jacob saw this battle coming and knew that it would be a multi-front battle. He’s using Locke to fight the enemy on the Island, and Ben to fight the enemy off the Island. Or maybe Jacob and Ben kiss and makeup sometime over the course of the next season – but it’s looking like in the flashforwardy future, Ben and the Island are still partners in the same battle.


Ben. That brings us to the crazy revelation at the end of this episode – Benjamin Linus is alive and well in the future… and totally off the Island. Actually, this shouldn’t have come as that big of a surprise given the super-revealing details of the secret room inside his house. Clearly, the fact that Ben has large sums of currency from across the world, a host of different passports, and a full collection of super-boring wardrobe indicates that Richard Alpert isn’t the only one who has been making trips off the Island over the years.



As we mentioned last week, this gives a much more literal meaning to Ben’s quote from last season of “most of the people you see? I brought them here”… and probably confirms that the picture Miles had of Ben was snapped during on of his off-Island recruiting missions. So it makes sense that if things get really crazy on the Island, and the Freightors start to win the battle, that Ben would leave the Island in an effort to take them out at the source, back in the real world.

But there are still a few points that don’t make sense. First and foremost, why didn’t Ben leave the Island to have his spinal surgery performed by some neutral surgeon, rather than having Jack do it and just hope that he didn’t kill him on the operating table? My previous best explanation for why Ben was so adamant about using Jack was that he refused to leave the Island – but we now see that this isn’t the case. Was this an example of Ben simply needing Jack to perform the surgery as a way to prove he still had a strong connection to the Island / Jacob, and it would “take care of him” without needing real world intervention? Or was it simply a plot device to move the third season along?

The other, much more difficult question concerns the huge stash of money found in Ben’s secret desk. Clearly, this money had to come from somewhere. While we’ve already established the wealth and power of Hanso / Dharma – it also seems logical that all ties to these groups would have been severed when Ben went all purgey on the Dharmites.



There are a few somewhat logical explanations for the money still flowing, with the easiest being that it was included in the periodic ration drops that apparently were paid for well-in-advance and are being carried about by some independent Dharma third party. The other would be that Ben, during his recruiting missions, sucked in some investors – possibly promising them access to the magic power of the Island, living forever, etc. The third (which I’ll do my best to disprove shortly) is that due to the Funky Time on the Island, Ben was able to gamble on sporting events that he already knew the outcome.

The important thing here is that Ben seemed to have kept all of this secret from the majority of the Others. He needed to keep up the image that the Island would provide everything that you needed, that there was no need to ever leave, or even that there was no possible way to leave the Island (at least after the Hatch Implosion). It all feeds back to the central theme of Ben controlling the lives and being the puppeteer for everyone on the Island… our Survivors included.


Sayid. Before we start discussing Sayid, keep this in mind – he’s probably the smartest, most level-headed and logical of any of our Survivors. Even though he’s seen killing people in the flashforward and working for Ben, there is no way Sayid would be doing any of this unless there was an extremely good reason for it. After all, he said that the day he even believed Ben would be the day he sells his soul. But we see that he is not only believing Ben – but working for him, and risking his life for him.

The other weird thing is that Sayid seems to be the only member of the Oceanic Six who is engaged in these Alias-esque spy-assassination games. Jack, Kate, and Hurley may have their own post-Island issues going on, but it doesn’t seem like anyone is attempting to kill them – and they aren’t attempting to kill anyone else. So what happened with Sayid?

If you go back and read the conversation between Ben and Sayid at the conclusion of “The Economist”, it gives a few hints:

Ben: “These people don't deserve our sympathies. Need I remind you what they did the last time you fought with your heart instead of your gun?”Sayid: “You used it to recruit me to kill him for you.” Ben: “Do you want to protect your friends or not, Sayid? I have another name for you.”Sayid: “But they know I'm after them.” Ben: “Good.”

First, it looks like there was some event that drove Sayid to begin working for Ben. Given the absence of Nadia in this episode, smart money would be on Sayid returning as a member of the Oceanic Six, reuniting with his former lady-friend, and having her killed by Freightors (fun twist – it’s actually Ben that kills her, but he convinces Sayid it was the Freightors as a way to get him to work for him!).

Second, Ben mentions that Sayid is doing all this killing in an effort to protect his friends. Sayid’s “friends” could either be referring to the other members of the Oceanic Six (who again, seem somewhat oblivious to any potential danger), or to the Survivors left behind on the Island. This would again tie in to the theory that our Oceanic Six left everyone behind on the Island in the middle of a bad situation, and Sayid is working with Ben to try and eliminate the enemy in the real world to indirectly help the Survivors fight off the Freightors on-Island.

Lastly, it seems as though Ben has a list (again with the lists – man, the Others are just like my future wife!), this time containing the names of everyone associated with “The Economist”. Sayid is working through the list to eliminate people and gain information about the Economist – who seems to be the head of the group that poses such a danger to the Island and “every living person on it”. Sayid had previously been working covertly – but now his cover is blown. Why is this a good thing?

Much like Hurley in this week’s episode, the key to any good trap is bait. Now that the Economist knows the true intentions of Sayid, there’s a chance he’ll start sending his own henchmen after him – which could help Ben track down the Economist through these henchmen. Sure, it’s probably putting Sayid’s life in much greater danger – but for Ben, that’s a small price to pay for a chance to eliminate the Economist.


The Economist. I suppose with all this talk about the Economist, we should probably analyze who this person really is. There were only a few clues throughout the episode – but we’ll see what information can be garnered from them.

First, Elsa carries around an oversized, Zack-Morris-Cell-Phone-style pager, which indicates that the Economist is more of an old-fashioned person. If you wanted to get really crazy, you could say that he “hates technology”, which would put him in the same category as Jacob. What if the Economist is Jacob, and this whole Jacob vs. Ben battle for the Island is what spilled over into the real world? Not likely – let’s just call the Economist a traditionalist for now.



Second, Elsa said her employer specialized in “emerging markets”. You could see how the potential applications of all the crazy properties of the Island might make it a very lucrative place for someone who was interested in “emerging markets” – which would help our earlier argument that the Freightors are working for some rival company of Dharma / Hanso (perhaps Widmore?)

Lastly, we see that he has a bracelet fetish (at least for his ladies), since both Elsa and Naomi were seen sporting basically the same jewelry. Although we haven’t seen it on any of the Freightors, that probably makes sense since Frank mentioned that they weren’t in the same class as Naomi – and probably were hired specifically for this Island task, rather than being card-carrying members of the Economist’s team.




Minkowski. Speaking of the Economist’s team, the Minkowski character is still a puzzle to me. Remember, Minkowski was the person that Jack and Kate talked to on the satellite phone last season and at the beginning of this season. He was also the one that told Faraday to take him off speaker phone, but later was “unable to come to the phone.” Now, we’ve got Frank telling Faraday that if Minkowski picks up the phone, to hang up. Looking at all these details, there’s definitely some mixed signals.

If Minkowski was Ben’s mole (and a traitor), why would he care if he was on speakerphone? If Minkowski is a trustworthy member of the Freightors, why wouldn’t Frank want Faraday to talk to him? And where was he when he couldn’t come to the phone? Something tells me that Minkowski is currently on his way to the Island, is a volatile person (even Frank is afraid of him), and someone to be avoided.


Funky Time. I saved the most complex for last. When I first watched this episode, it seemed pretty clear that there was some “funky time” on the Island. After all, there have been plenty of clues in the past that seemed to point to something being a little “off” in the way time moves on the Island, and the show’s creators have gone out of their way to drop quotes that made you question the concept of time on Lost. We finally seemed to get some confirmation of the “funky time” with Faraday’s stopwatch test with the payload… or did we?





Let’s review some of the “evidence” of funky time over the years (courtesy of Lostpedia):

• Ana-Lucia tells Goodwin: "This knife's probably 20 years old. You don't see these anymore, yet here it is, on this island. Weird, huh?"
• Referring to a source of a radio transmission that consists of a Big Band recording from the 1940's, Sayid says, "It could be coming from anywhere." Hurley responds, "Or any time.”
• Jack looked for a clock to announce the time of death for Colleen, but he couldn't find one.
• Dr. Alpert showed Juliet a scan that according to her seems to be the womb lining of a 70 year old but is in fact a 20 year old.
• The message “Only fools are enslaved by time and space” was playing in the Rave Room.
• Desmond relives events that have happened in his past in his "Déjà vu" after being knocked out, and has a number of issues with time continuity until he is knocked out again.
• Richard Alpert tells Juliet, "You're gonna be amazed at how time flies once you're there", referring to the Island.
• Richard Alpert doesn't seem to age. Ben asks him if he even remembers what a birthday is.
• Damon Lindelof said “It’s interesting that you should ask about time because… you know… you’re making a basic assumption that they’ve been there, y’know, as long as they think they’ve been there.”
• The payload arrived at Daniel's position 31 minutes after Regina said it reached the target. Daniel confirmed this by comparing the time on the clock inside the rocket with the time clock he had on the island.

All this seems to point that there is something weird going on with the time, most likely that time on the Island moves slower than it does in the rest of the world. Pretty straight forward right? Not so fast, my friend (I miss you College Gameday).

Although there are a number of verbal clues and “suggestions” about the funky time above, the closest thing we have to something factual is Faraday’s payload experiment. On the other hand, we’ve got a few very concrete statements and events that seem to confirm that the Island is in sync with the rest of the world.

First, Ben told Jack what happened off-the-island during the given timeline: "Your flight crashed on September 22nd, 2004. Today is November 29th. That means you've been on our island for 69 days. Yes, we do have contact with the outside world, Jack. That's how we know that during those 69 days your fellow Americans re-elected George W. Bush; Christopher Reeve has passed away; the Boston Red Sox won the World Series."

The key there is that Ben refers to “today” as a date that corresponds with a date on the outside world. Later, we see Juliet give the exact length of her stay on the island: 3 years, 2 months and 28 days – which again seems to correspond with the date of the outside world seen by Alpert’s newspaper when visiting Juliet’s sister.

But lastly, and most importantly, we have this – Desmond’s printout of the system failure from the Hatch, which brought Oceanic Flight 815 to the Island in the first place… dated September 22, 2004 at 4:16 – the same date and time of the crash for the rest of the world.

If time on the Island were really moving slower, those dates would not match up.

But aside from all the potential red herrings listed above, how do you explain the payload time difference? The most logical explanation seems to be what I will call the “Bubble Theory”.

(Note: since magnetism and electricity were always the last chapters in my science books growing up, I don’t think we ever got them over the course of my entire education – so I really have no idea what I’m talking about or if any of this is possible)

I’m picturing the Island as sitting inside some sort of giant electromagnetic bubble. There’s only one safe way in or out of this bubble. If you attempt to enter or exit anywhere other than this one opening, you bounce off it, have your electric systems go wacky, or burst into flames (just kidding on the last one). If the payload didn’t hit the opening in the bubble, it would continue bouncing around inside the electromagnetic field until eventually it found a way through – it’s during this bouncing where the time is “lost” compared to the Island or the rest of the world (where time is still continuing as normal).



This would match up nicely with a lot of evidence over the years – Ben telling Michael he has to follow bearing 325 to get off the Island, Faraday warning Frank to leave the Island the exact same way that they came in, and even the old time radio station that Hurley and Sayid heard on the beach. Once the radio signal found its way inside the bubble, it would just keep bouncing around forever, unless it found a way out the same way it came in.

An intriguing variation of this theory would be if there were a number of ways to come into the Island, but you simply had to exit the same way that you came in, or else you suffer some sort of weird side effect of the electromagnetic field. If this were true, although Frank is going to be totally fine leaving the Island, Sayid and Desmond might be in trouble since they probably arrived on a different bearing.



You could even take it a step further and try to use the Bubble Theory to explain the “funky space” that we’ve seen – if you can somehow break through the Bubble in a place other than the designated hole, it acts as a sort of worm hole, sending you to another place in the world (see: Dharma polar bear in Africa, Africa plane on Island).

This also means that the apparent eternal life of the Others isn’t tied to “funky time” on Island at all… which actually should have been apparent to me a long time ago. After all, Ben (and the Dharmites) have lived there for many years and aged – if it was something intrinsic to the funky time of the Island that caused the Others to look so ageless, one would assume it would have had the same effect on Ben. We’ve also seen both Ben (who ages) and Alpert (who doesn’t age) leave the Island on various missions, so clearly it isn’t tied to never leaving the Island either. It seems as though Alpert’s lack of aging is tied to some other mystery altogether – or just a fun byproduct of being “one with the Island” or BFF with Jacob.


So after all that information overload, where do we stand? Surprisingly, not far from where we started before the episode. We learned that the “battle for the Island” spills over into the real world, that the “funky time” might be nothing more than time lost passing through the electromagnetic field to get to or from the Island, that Ben is seemingly always going to be two steps ahead of everyone else on or off the Island, and that Sayid becomes an Iraqi James Bond with the smoothest looking hair you’ve ever seen once he gets off the Island. It all seemed pretty overwhelming and puzzling upon first viewing, but now I’m feeling okay with “The Economist”.

Bring on next week!

http://facethewoods.com/lost/index.php?topic=254.0

"The Economist" Instant Reactions!

The free ride is over.

Before we get to the Instant Reactions for this week, I need your help. You see, my friend Kevin (or "KFly", as he is known in most circles) recently got engaged (copycat). He entered some sort of contest to win free photography for his wedding (which is surprisingly quite expensive - trust me, I know)... and made the final three.

Now it's up to an Internet based vote. You can vote as many times as you would like, and I'd encourage about 10 times before proceeding on to read the Instant Reactions so that you don't feel like you are stealing.

Just visit: http://www.comfortphotography.blogspot.com/ and vote for "The Calendar" starring Randi and Kevin. You can even read their sappy love story below if you scroll down.

Why should you do this?

1. Because I asked you. Very politely.
2. Because he is competing against a Steelers fan, making it a case of good vs. evil.
3. Because KFly is actually in my wedding, and if he wins this, I won't have to get him a present.

Thank you for your help.

Now back to your regularly scheduled Blog Post...


Brian's Two Word Review: Information Overload

I feel like there is so much to take in from this week's episode, I hardly know where to begin. I'll just start rattling off thoughts and see how much I can remember:

1. Funky Time - I love that after last week's episode, I was sure that funky time on the Island wasn't likely - and that funky space was probably the effect of the electromagnetic properties... and then this episode immediately proves me wrong. In fact, it almost proved that time moves slower on the Island than it does in the rest of the world. The implications? Jack said he's been on the Island for 100 days. For the rest of the world, it's probably been more like 200 (I'll do the more precise math for my analysis). This also helps explain why the Island was such a great place for all these wacky experiments to save the world - because you have more time to do so!

(Update: actually, the more I think about this - the more I question this seemingly obvious explanation. Keep in mind that Faraday was able to communicate in real-time with the Freightor. You would think there would be a lag if time was moving differently...)

2. Sayid - so Sayid gets off the Island and becomes an assassin for Team Ben? Who saw that one coming? It's looking like this upcoming "war" between the Freightors (who apparently all wear stylish jewelry from "R.G.") and the Others doesn't just stick to the Island - but spills over into the rest of the world in some grand globe-trotting battle royale for control of the Island. The plot just got a lot thicker.

3. Ben - first, we see that he clearly has been traveling off the Island (in secret), probably explaining where the photo that Miles had actually came from (off the Island - the much cleaner answer, if you remember from my analysis!). Then, we learn that he actually did leave the Island (perhaps as a way to take the fight to the Freightors in an effort to defeat them?). A lot of people are going to say this proves that Ben wasn't in the coffin - but for me, this proves more than anything that he WAS in the coffin. Why? What if Ben was the leader of the "Oceanic Six", who were working to fight the Freightors / reclaim the Island / save the world? His death (a staged suicide by the Freightors?) could signify the battle is lost - leading Jack to attempt to take up the leadership role in the battle, after years of denying it. "We have to go back Kate."

4. Helicopter. Is this really Lost? Are we really having plotlines speed along this fast these days? Desmond and Sayid on a helicopter heading for the Freighter one episode after finding the helicopter?! Remember in the good ol' days when it would take our Survivors twelve episodes to build a raft, only to have it burn down, then ten more to finally have the raft leave... only to have it blown up by Others? Well, those days are clearly behind us. I was watching with disbelief thinking "we're actually going to see the Freighter / Ben's mole / our Survivors in the outside world in a matter of weeks!" Giddy!

5. The Economist. Yep, just as a predicted, a throwaway reference in the episode with no deeper meaning at all... besides the fact that "The Economist" is probably the "big bad" for the remainder of the series of Lost! From this day forth, we'll use this name for the boss of the Freightors and Abbadon - until we learn more about this mysterious character.

Okay - that's all I can handle for now. If this is any indication of how great Lost is going to be this season, it's going to be the best ever. I need to let it sink in for a bit. Full analysis this weekend!

http://facethewoods.com/lost/index.php?topic=250.0

Lost - "The Economist"

Let me warn you before we start, this post is probably going to be a disappointment. Why? Well, let’s just say it might go down in history as the shortest episode preview post in modern Blog history. It’s not because it’s Valentine’s Day this week, or that I’m busy getting married / buying a house, or anything like that – it’s simply because there is very little to garner from any of the usual preview places this week (you’ll see what I mean shortly).

Are those crafty Lost writers on to me? Is this all part of a massive scheme to stop me from figuring out the great mysteries of Lost ahead of time? Or are they simply trying to put a stop to the hundreds of thousands of dollars I’m making off their creative juices this week? Stop putting the Blog out of business, damn you!

Okay, with that disclaimer out of the way, I’m sure you’re all very excited to read on, so let’s get down to our very brief business.

Episode Title: “The Economist”

Brian's Deeper Meaning Guess: You’ve got me.

I did my usual due diligence in researching the title – seeing if it could describe any characters or situations on the show, checking Google for references to TV / music / movie / books, and asking strangers on the street what their ideas were – but it all just kept pointing back to the same two simple things.

The dictionary definition of an economist (which is an expert in the field of economics - the branch of social science that deals with the production and distribution and consumption of goods and services and their management).

The newspaper “The Economist” (which is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by "The Economist Newspaper Ltd" and edited in London. It has been in continuous publication since James Wilson established it in September 1843. As of summer 2007, its average circulation tops 1.2 million copies a week, about half of which are sold in North America. Consequently it is often seen as a transatlantic (as opposed to solely British) news source.)

Neither of those really screams out anything remotely related to this week’s Sayid-centric episode, do they?

So what are we left with? Well, first of all I guess we should discuss the panther-sized cat that ABC let out of the bag with this week’s episode preview, promising the viewer that “the next member of the Oceanic Six will be revealed.” Since the only way to truly “reveal” that someone is a member of the Oceanic Six is to show them off the Island, and since this week is a Sayid-centric affair, it’s pretty clear what we’re looking at this week…

Sayid Flashforwards!

This makes Sayid the fourth of six members of the ultra-exclusive Oceanic Six club, along with Hurley, Jack, and Kate. He probably knows the secret handshake and everything. I have to admit, this is one of the last characters I would have guessed to make it off the Island. Claire, Sun, and Jin seemed like overly obvious choices for the final three members… which I guess is why it couldn’t have been them. This is Lost we’re talking about, after all.

To me, Sayid just seemed like the kind of guy who would die a noble death helping others escape off the Island – and he’s always around guns and explosions and stuff like that due to his military expertise. But based on this most recent Sayid development, it’s looking more likely that Claire (and Aaron) stick around to fulfill their Season One Island prophecy (the next generation of Others?) and DO NOT become members of the “Oceanic Six”. I still refuse to budge on my Sun and Jin prediction though. If you think about it, Sun still absolutely has to make it off the Island or else she dies. That seems like a lock. On the other side, Jin has to go with Sun or else he will be incapable of communicating with anyone else on the show, rendering his character to someone who can do stuff and stand in the background, but never have another line of real dialogue (not good for storytelling purposes). They are a joint package, rounding out the Oceanic Six.

So, my newest predicted Oceanic Six stand as follows:

1. Jack
2. Kate
3. Hurley
4. Sayid
5. Sun
6. Jin

It’s a motley crew for sure (and quite International, which might explain how the “Oceanic Six” become such a worldwide phenomenon), but it is made up of a nice representation of the “core characters” from the original thirteen. It’s funny – when you say “Oceanic Six” it feels like that would leave a LOT of characters left behind – but there really aren’t too many left from the core group of Season One. In fact, the only ones remaining would be:

1. Claire
2. Sawyer
3. Locke

(…and maybe Michael / Walt. I’m still not sure how to handle or classify them, since their storyline is so up in the air right now. For all we know they have already gone back to the “real world”, changed their identities to cover up any connection to Oceanic Flight 815, and moved on with their lives – or become spies for Ben on the Freighter – or become Dharma Shark food.)

The bad news is that this also means that the characters most at risk of dying on the Island would be one of these three characters, or non-Oceanic characters like Juliet / Desmond / Alex / Karl / CFL. Since you have to assume that someone will have to die in this upcoming “battle for the Island”, I’d start worrying if you’re a fan of any of these characters. Actually, if I had to start a death watch now, Desmond and Sawyer would both (sadly) be at the top of the list.

But we digress. Back to the “The Economist”. Did I almost make you forget that I totally glossed over the episode title with all my Oceanic Six talk?

Based on my very boring and non-Lost sounding research above, here’s the only thing I can come up with: either this is one of those “throwaway” sort of titles, like “Enter 77” that will be mentioned in passing, relating to a very specific thing in the episode (maybe Sayid meets with an “Economist” in his flashforward?)… or it is being used in a very broad and general sense to describe the very rational Sayid.

Economists deal with the distribution and consumption of goods – and managing the process. Out of all the Survivors, Sayid seems the most level headed one, the one most capable of managing the process of working with the Freightors and getting as many people off the Island as possible given the situation. Although we don’t have any real consumer goods for Sayid to distribute, we do have some less tangible “goods” on the Island like “seats on the helicopter off the Island” (high demand, low supply), “killing Locke and capturing / killing Ben” (high demand, low supply), and “figuring out the secrets of the Island” (high demand, low supply). Perhaps Sayid is the one who organizes the barter of these three goods – agreeing to bring Ben to the Freightors in return for escape off the Island, who in turn will give up Island secrets to the Freightors in return for them not killing them, etc.

It’s probably the biggest stretch I’ve ever made in the history of deeper meaning guess, but that’s the best I can do. Moving on…


ABC Description: Locke's hostage may be the key to getting off the island, so Sayid and Kate go in search of their fellow castaway in an attempt to negotiate a peaceful deal. Guest starring are Ken Leung as Miles, Jeremy Davies as Daniel Faraday, Rebecca Mader as Charlotte, Jeff Fahey as Frank Lapidus, Mira Furlan as Danielle Rousseau, Marsha Thomason as Naomi, Armando Pucci as Italian man and Thekla Reuten as Elsa.


Episode Breakdown. Another week, another one sentence episode description – at least it’s a compound sentence with a comma this time!


Hostage. Surprisingly, this one sentence is pretty loaded. For example, Locke actually has two “hostages” that one could argue are the key to getting off the Island – Ben and Charlotte. On the one hand, I’m sure the other Freightors would want to make rescuing Charlotte a top priority before they do anything else – look at how their instinct upon crashing was to find each other. But on the other hand, they’ve already revealed that finding Ben is tied to their overall “mission” on the Island in the first place.

The second portion of the sentence sheds some light on the “mission” of the episode – sending Sayid and Kate (and Miles) to find Locke (who has told them he was going to the Barracks) to try and organize a peaceful deal. How do I know all of this? From two screen shots in the episode preview.

First, we see a gun-toting Sayid snooping around a very barren looking Barracks. Keep in mind that Sayid probably still has the map leading to the Barracks that he swiped from the Flame, so he’s a logical person to lead the team there.



Then, we see Miles having less than friendly banter with Hurley, which means that he must go along with Kate and Sayid, and the two groups actually do meet up.



But then what?

See, that’s the thing about this episode. Remember the pre-season “chill-inducing preview” that showed all sorts of awesome scenes for this season of Lost? Well, we pretty much burned through all of them last week – leaving us with not much left for this week. The other weird thing is that this week’s episode preview contained a whole lot of clips from earlier episodes – not this week.

Something about that makes me very excited for this week’s episode. Maybe the good folks at ABC decided that since they spoiled the “Oceanic Six” part of the episode, they might as well make the rest of it a surprise for us. The other thing that

Something tells me that a lot of stuff goes down this week. After all, we also have this picture of the helicopter actually taking off – which would seemingly indicate that the mission was not only a success – but that Sayid / Kate / Miles make it to the Barracks and back in one week! Now I know what the Lost writers were talking about when they said things were going to move fast this season. Remember seasons of yore when it would take three episodes for characters to go from the beach to the Barracks? No more!



I’m sure it’s not as simple as that. I’m sure that there will be some substantial roadblocks this week, and in the end Team Island (with Locke and Ben still very much a part of it) still acting independently towards their own goals, while Team Freightor slowly works towards accomplishing their mysterious mission, with Team Rescue somewhat caught in the middle, just wanting to get off the Island and let the other two teams fight. But still – there’s a large potential for a lot of storyline progression on-Island this week.


Flashes. We’ve already established that this week should feature Sayid Flashforwards, but what will those flashforwards entail? Well, a quick scan of the guest stars this week reveals the four Freightors (plus Naomi – which means she’s getting a guest star credit for laying on the ground and playing dead), CFL ( who is due for a better storyline than just standing around in the background and occasionally hitting Ben), and an “Italian Man” and “Elsa” (pictured below).





It’s clear that these two will be featured in Sayid’s future – which may mean he moves to Italy (he’s quite the world traveler, since he’s already been seen living in Iraq and Paris). Hey, one of them might even be an Economist! But the more interesting thing is the lack of one particular guest star – Nadia.


Nadia. Now is as good of time as any to mention the mystery of Nadia. We’ve seen her buying a house with Locke and being saved by a mugger thanks to Charlie – and we know that she was working as a lab technician in Los Angeles just before Flight 815 crashed. However, if you recall Season One’s “Solitary”, Sayid very clearly tells CFL that Nadia is dead because of him.

I would think that if Sayid really does make it back to the real world, one of the first things he would do is to find Nadia and pretend that he never hooked up with Shannon on the Island – but the lack of her inclusion in this episode may indicate that this isn’t the case. On the other hand, maybe he came back and was messed up Jack-style, which drove her away – so we could be in store for a flashforward that takes place a good deal of time after rescue from the Island.


I’m out. I feel like I cheated you out of a full preview post this week, so feel free to pose any outstanding questions you might have in the comments section or message board over the next two days and I’ll try to answer them to make it up to you.

Happy Losting!

http://facethewoods.com/lost/index.php?topic=249.0

"Confirmed Dead" Analysis!

I have no idea.

I have no idea where this post is going to go, because frankly – I’m still fairly puzzled by a lot of the Freightor-centric happenings of this week’s episode. Hopefully, once I start writing something will start making sense, but I make no promises. I’m just going to attack this thing as logically as possibly and hope for the best.

This could be a Blog disaster.

Cabins. But let’s start with something simpler (read: non-Freightor-related) – our boy Jacob. One of the very interesting things early on this week was when Locke mentioned he needed to make a detour to a cabin. Hurley responds that they are heading in the wrong direction, causing both Locke and Ben to do a double-take.



What does this mean?

Well, in the season premiere, it seemed reasonable enough that Hurley stumbled upon the same cabin that Ben and Locke visited last season, but then had a vision of that cabin when he turned around. It seemed logical because we assumed that Locke would have gone back to this cabin after his encounter with Taller Walt, and that’s where he ran into a lost Hurley wandering through the jungle.

But now that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Now, it seems as though Hurley imagined / saw a vision of BOTH the cabins last week, including Christian Shepherd and the Freaky Eye inside. The repercussions of this could go one of two ways:

1. The Island Spirit has decided to start sending Hurley these images for yet unknown reasons, and Hurley was not at the true Cabin.

2. The Cabin doesn’t really “exist” anywhere, and only appears in the eye of the beholder.

Both options have their issues.

For the first option, it’s unclear why the Island would call out to Hurley. It seems as though Locke has been appointed the “chosen one”, and the one who could free Jacob from his volcano ash prison, if that really is the case. It’s especially puzzling as to why the Island Spirit would choose to appear in the form of Christian Shepherd to Hurley, someone who means nothing to him.

The second option doesn’t really hold up much better, in part due to what we saw during “The Man Behind the Curtain” last season. If the cabin itself were a sign that the Island Spirit / Jacob was communicating with someone, Ben would have freaked out when Locke saw the cabin – not when he heard Jacob speaking.

So it seems as though the first option is the best guess – and perhaps a sign that there is a lot more to Hurley than meets the eye. Maybe it isn’t as clear cut as Locke vs. Ben for the title of “Jacob’s BFF”. We’ll keep an eye (pun intended) on this development as the season progresses.

Now on to the fun.


Freightors. I think the most logical way to try to understand who the Freightors are is to break them down one by one. So we’ll go through them as they appeared in the episode, then try to tie it all together at the end.


Daniel Faraday. The first Freightor we met was Daniel Faraday, a physicist seen crying as he watched the news telecast of the discovery of the Oceanic Flight 815 wreckage. Naomi later refers to him as a “headcase”. It should be noted that Michael Faraday was the name of an English physicist who studied electromagnetism and developed “Faraday Cages”, which are used to block radio and electromagnetic waves. Coincidence in the naming of this character? I think not!

The first question you have to ask is “why was this guy crying when he saw the wreckage?” The easy answer would be something like he knew someone on board, but when asked why he is crying, he responds with “I don’t know”. I have to think that if you knew someone on board, you would answer that question differently.



So if he didn’t know anyone on board, what could be the cause?

Well, later we see Faraday on the Island, seemingly off in his own world talking about how the light on the Island “doesn’t quite scatter right”. Granted, based on what I’ve read on Wikipedia, this could very well be true since the scattering coefficient increases with the application of a magnetic field (smartest ten words ever written on this Blog!), but who notices that sort of thing?

To me, Faraday seems like an overly sensitive person – one who notices the little things (like light scattering), avoids conflict (trying to diffuse the gun situation between Jack and Miles), and is probably really, really smart (I don’t remember seeing a lot of physicists hanging around the bar in college, unlike business majors). I’m not trying to be overly simplistic, but is it possible he was simply crying because of the loss of human life he was viewing on TV? Even if the crash was “faked” at the bottom of the ocean, the bodies down there looked pretty real (which brings up the question of what 300 people were killed to stage this thing!), which still makes it a tragedy. I could easily see Faraday being some weirdo who “feels the pain of others” and starts crying upon thinking about the death – which would fit in nicely with Naomi’s description of him as a “headcase”, wouldn’t it?

I know – simply deciding that Faraday is a crazy sensitive person seems like a cop out analysis, but I don’t see any other evidence of a Faraday connection to the Island. I’m thinking his flashback served as a way to show the viewer the news report of the fake wreckage more than give insight to a Faraday connection to the whole thing.


Miles Straume. I’m not going to lie, I’m not a big fan of this “Ghostbuster” storyline. I’m not sure why I’m totally okay with our Survivors seeing weird images of dead people on the Island, but feel like Miles seemingly communicating with dead people is cheesy and unrealistic, but that’s where I stand right now.



I’m also afraid that the introduction to this character is merely a cheap plot device used to explain the truth about Jacob / Christian Shepherd / any other dead person on the Island. Shouldn’t our Survivors have to figure this stuff out on their own through working with Ben and the Others rather than have this quick and easy answer from a character that didn’t even exist in the Lost universe for the first three seasons of the show? Maybe I’m way off – and let’s admit it, the show’s writers have never let me down thus far, so I should have faith – but I’m a little unsure of this storyline.

But what else do we know about Miles? His flashback didn’t reveal much (no, that wasn’t Eko / Yemi’s house) aside from confirming his weirdo ghost whispering skills and proving he’s in it for the money, not the drugs. He claims that he studies soil (which seems to be a lie), seemed to work for himself pre-Freightor life by ridding homes of unwanted spirits, and is the most intense and mission-oriented of any of the Freightors. He’s probably the one we need to worry the most about.


Charlotte Staples Lewis. Out of all the Freightor flashbacks, Charlotte’s was the most interesting. She’s an anthropologist (studies cultures) – but more specifically looks to focus on archaeology. Apparently she’s reading every article she can find on the crash of Oceanic Flight 815. Upon arriving on the Island, she seems to generally want to help rescue our Survivors and actually seems surprised that they exist and don’t want to be rescued.

But the big question surrounding Charlotte is the polar bear skeleton she finds in Tunisia, complete with Dharma collar. How in the world would a Dharma polar bear end up half-way around the world, in the middle of a desert. Furthermore, how did Charlotte know exactly where to look for this skeleton, and why did she only seem concerned about the Dharma collar?



Let’s lay some background. Dharma started in 1970. Oceanic Flight 815 crashed in September 2004. Based on the Flight815 ARG, the “fake wreckage” was found around Christmas 2004. Add it all up, and the polar bear skeleton can’t be more than 35 years old (which would match Charlotte’s comment of “you’re off by a few million years” to her cohort when asked if it was a dinosaur). The good news is that left outside in warm or hot weather, a polar bear carcass would become a skeleton in far less than 35 years (I couldn’t find this specific information on the Internet, but for comparison – a human body would take two to four weeks to become a skeleton in a desert). I know a lot of people are pointing to this skeleton as evidence of Dharma time travel / funky time, but based on this information, the skeleton proves neither.

However, there’s still the pesky question of how a Dharma polar bear went from the Island in the Pacific / Indian Ocean halfway around the world to Africa before dying in the middle of the desert. The one thing we can assume is that this polar bear started out in the Hydra Station on the Island (since it bears the logo of the station). For me, this doesn’t indicate funky time – but funky space. If you think back, this has really always been the case with the Island. From the Black Rock to Eko’s plane, things seem to appear on the Island that should be far far away in the world. I’m reminded of some of our discussions a long time ago about the concept of “vile vortices” – Bermuda triangly places that act as worm holes from one area of the earth to another.



Sure, the African vortice isn’t quite in Tunisia – but a concept like this could help explain how the polar bear got halfway around the world, then quickly died without food / water.

But what about Charlotte? The important thing to remember is that she sought out this dig site – she didn’t just happen upon it. She also immediately went for the collar, not thinking twice about the fact that a polar bear skeleton was in the middle of the desert. This seems to indicate that Charlotte was somehow affiliated with or researching the experiments of the Dharma Initiative, and was sent on a retrieval mission to confirm if their experiment worked. Maybe Dharma was messing with a power they didn’t fully understand, and have spent years scanning the globe to find out where the polar bears they pushed through the worm hole actually ended up.

I should mention there’s always a chance that Charlotte has no idea what Dharma is - but as an archaeologist has found polar bear skeletons with Dharma collars around the world over the years. That could make her merely a curious scientist who is working to find other Dharma collars, and is working to try and understand what it means.

But if not, this puts Charlotte as someone “in the know” about Dharma. Either she works for Dharma, used to work for Dharma, works for a rival organization of Dharma, or has spent some time studying Dharma.

Does that narrow it down?


Frank Lapidus. Frank is already in the running to be a big fan favorite. He seems like the kind of rational, laid back hippie drunk who we’d all like to be friends with. Apparently he used to work as a pilot for Oceanic Airlines, and was supposed to be flying Flight 815 before being replaced by Seth Norris (finally our Pilot has a name!). He and Seth must have been the best of friends in the world, because he recognized a fake body as soon as he saw it on TV due to the lack of a wedding ring – and perhaps foolishly immediately alerted the authorities of this. On the Island we learn that he has memorized the entire manifest for Flight 815, and immediately calls Juliet out as being an outsider.



Based on this, we can make a few assumptions about Frank. He’s in no way connected with Dharma / the people who faked the crash. He’s perhaps the only Freightor that would have a logical connection to the Survivors / Flight 815. He seems to be the only person skeptical of the fake crash. If you were going to argue that the Freightors were “destined” to be on the Island (as fate has always been a big theme on Lost), Frank is the proof.

Otherwise, there doesn’t seem to be anything overly weird or strange about Frank – at least yet.


Abbadon. As Sully puts it “that guy with the weird name just took Ben’s place as the creepiest guy on Lost”. I couldn’t agree more. He seems to be the mastermind behind the Freightor operation, hand-picking the aforementioned people for “specific reasons” much to the objection of Naomi… which means he knows more than Naomi, and probably more than any of the other Freightors combined. They seem to be pawns in his game.



This also seems to confirm (as I had guessed) that when he asked Hurley “are they alive?”, chances are he was asking about his team of Freightors – not so much about the Survivors. Although we probably shouldn’t trust anything he says, it’s worth noting that he assures Naomi there are no survivors. He might be tricking her into thinking the mission will be easier, or he might believe what he has been told by the news media / his company (Dharma / Hanso / Maxwell / Other). But something tells me that isn’t the last we’ll see of ol’ Abbadon (or Abby, as his friends call him).


The Rest. Finally, heard but not seen this episode were Minkowski and Regina. Both are apparently still on the Freighter, and when talking Faraday, Minkowski asks “am I on speaker?” like he is going to tell a secret he doesn’t want the Survivors to hear – but later “can’t come to the phone” even though it’s an emergency. Unlike Frank, there is plenty of fishy stuff going on with these two.

Okay, now that we know the players, let’s turn to the game. What the heck are they doing there?


Benjamin Linus. In the words of Miles, they’re there for Ben. Rescuing our Survivors isn’t their primary objective, their primary objective is to find / capture / kill / hug Benjamin Linus. But why?

Well, this causes my mind to spin off in a ton of different directions.

If the Freightors wanted to simply kill or capture Ben (revenge for the purge, perhaps), they wouldn’t have brought the motley crew of Faraday, Linus, Charlotte, and Frank – they would have brought some enforcers with names like Knuckles, Tiny, and Bubba. On the other hand, if they were simply Dharma reinforcements coming in to continue the original missions of the organization (which would kinda make sense based on each of their backgrounds), I don’t see why Ben would be so afraid of them and claim that they were going to kill every living person on the Island. So we’re left with something in between – where they need Ben for information about the Island, but then intend to purge everyone on the Island (note the gas masks that Jack came across). So who would want this type of information? Again, we’re finding ourselves back at Dharma Rival Organization. This would explain why they couldn’t find the Island until now, why Ben is so afraid of them, and why they aren’t there for a rescue mission. They are there to kick start the research that Dharma started, with Faraday taking over the magnetism work, Charlotte taking over the animal work (or studies of the Island history), and Miles there to work on the more mystical work with the Island Spirit. As for Frank? I guess he’s either there for comic relief and his pilot skills… or sent on a suicide mission to ensure he won’t continue talking to the authorities about the “fake crash” at the bottom of the ocean.

But how do these Freightors know about Ben in the first place? They’ve even got a hilarious picture of him!



The picture appears to have been taken years ago, featuring a younger Ben decked out in an awful late 70’s early 80’s outfit working in a very bland looking office area… which means one of two things:

1. The photo was taken on the Island, where Ben has spent his entire life.
2. The photo was taken off the Island, when Ben was on a “recruiting mission” a la Alpert to Juliet.

If the first scenario is true, that would mean that whoever the Freightors are, they have access to Dharma Information. This could be a photo from the personnel file on Benjamin Linus or a grab from a security camera – but since it was taken on the Island, it would have had to come from Dharma. If this is the case, the Freightors are either Dharma, someone who took over Dharma, or a group that infiltrated Dharma for information.

It would also mean that they knew Ben was the only Dharmite left on the Island… which actually opens the door to all sorts of complications.

If Dharma knew that Ben was the only one alive, they would know he was responsible for the purge. Since Ben wasn’t any sort of “leader” inside Dharma, but rather a “workman”, there would be no reason for the Freightors to target him if Dharma was still alive and well, or if Ben was still tricking Dharma into thinking everything was fine.

However, if Ben killed all of Dharma with the purge, how would they know that he was the only one left? There would be no one else on the Island to report about what Ben did, and it’s unlikely he would do this himself… unless the purge effectively wiped out Dharma altogether and made them give up on the Island. Then, it’s quite possible that they would know Ben was responsible but not want or be able to do anything about it… and Ben would know this, and have no problem bragging about his role in the purge.

The second scenario is far easier – remember back during last season’s “The Man Behind the Curtain” where Ben claimed “Most of the people you see? I brought them here”? Well, maybe he was being literal in that claim – hand selecting people to come and become the new “Others” on the Island. If this is the case, all it would take is for someone to get suspicious during one of these “recruiting missions” when someone starts talking about a “magical place” to snap a picture and start investigating what it really means.

Again, based on the age of the picture, it would indicate that this search has lasted for many years (which brings up the question of who is funding the operation and how they got any hard information on the Island in the first place), but maybe everything is finally coming together for this new group to find the Island (the combination of the Hatch Implosion / the Looking Glass being shut down / Jack’s call).


Recap. Okay, so putting all those pieces together, here’s where I’m coming down – exactly where I started (what a waste of 3900 words!), with the Freightors being part of some Dharma rival organization that fully intend to purge the Island, and start over, picking up where Dharma left off. None of the Freightors have ever been to the Island before, but they’ve clearly got some information about it through research – because they’re sending in a very precise team to be able to deal with all the funkiness there. Looks like the theory will last for at least one more week.


Ben’s Man. One last item before we go (I know this post is getting ridiculously long) – at the end of the episode, Ben saved his life by spouting out tons of information about Charlotte and her crew, ending with “I have a man on their boat.” Who is this man?



Well, everyone and their brother on the Internet are calling for it to be Michael, which makes absolutely no sense to me. Yes, Michael is slated to return to the show this season, so that makes sense – but nothing else about it would. Michael left Lost Island on November 27th. We’re currently at about December 24th (almost Christmas!). That’s less than a month, so it’s not possible that Michael went back to the real world and became a “mole” in Abbadon’s group to get on the Freighter before it left – so he must have ran into it after it set sail.

But even if before Michael left, Ben gave him some sort of satellite phone and gave him coordinates to rendezvous with the Freightors, why would Michael “work” for Ben by gathering information for him? He’s already paid a huge price for escaping with his son (killing two people), what else could Ben possibly have to hold over his head? I can’t think of anything unless Michael somehow discovers that the Freightors really would kill all the Survivors and siding with Ben actually is a chance for redemption by saving them – but that’s pretty far out there.

For me, it’s more likely that “always two steps ahead of everyone else” Ben probably had a few bodies back in the “real world” to be on the lookout for anyone that gets too curious about the Dharma Initiative, their experiments, or a Magic Island. That means that Ben’s man on the boat is probably an Other that we haven’t met before – since he’s been off-Island since the series started. But if Ben really does know all this, why was he surprised when he learned about Naomi landing on the Island last season? Wouldn’t he have known this was a possibility given the roaming Freighter in their area? Almost from that point forward, Ben has basically been in contact with our Survivors, not leaving him with any alone time to be talking on the phone to his “mole” – which again points to him having this information prior to Naomi’s crash landing.

I’m a big fan of Ben’s man on the boat being Minkowski – the guy who had a private conversation with Faraday early in the episode, but then was “unable to come to the phone” later in the episode… perhaps because he was discovered to be a mole. As for who Minkowski is, I’ve got no answer.

Okay, that’s all I’ve got for this week. I’m not sure that I feel any more confident about understanding this episode or not since I basically ended up where I started, but at least I thought through and ruled out a lot of things. Sometimes the Blog is like that.

Oh – one point of clarification – there wasn’t anything in the trailer per se that indicated who the next member of the Oceanic Six is – except for the fact that they said the next member would be revealed. If you think about it, that probably means whoever is episode centric next week is the next member of the Oceanic Six, since we would have to see them in flashforward to know they get off the Island… and we’ve known the answer to that for weeks now.

Okay – now that’s really all. Your turn to talk!

Message Board Post (especially handy for those who are unable to reach the Blog from work): http://facethewoods.com/lost/index.php?topic=247.0

"Confirmed Dead" Instant Reactions!

Brian's One Word Review: Mysterious.

This episode really kicked up the puzzlement (is that a word?) to the point where I don't even know where to start. Here are the things I'll try to wrap my head around before my full analysis.

- Why take these four individuals (Miles, Dan, Charlotte, and Frank) on the "mission"? They were clearly picked for specific reasons by Abbadon. I could see Miles due to his potential ability to communicate with Jacob (but do they even know about Jacob?), Dan because of his knowledge about physics (and in turn, the "unique magnetic properties of the Island"), but what about the other two? Charlotte seems to have stumbled across evidence of Dharma through her archaeology - which brings up a whole other question on how the polar bear got to Tunisia, and Frank has a direct connection to Oceanic Flight 815 - and a reason to not believe that the crash was real. Were they all doubters of the fake crash sent to "disprove it" - or since they were doubters of the fake crash were they sent on basically a suicide mission to get rid of them? So much to digest.

- How did Ben know they were coming? Who is his "mole" on their ship? Why are the Freightors there for him?

- Are the Freightors actually just Dharma, on a mission for payback to Ben for his role in the "purge" of their people? Or do they just know that he knows the most about the Island? Again, how would they know any of this?

- Loved the mention of "taller ghost Walt" and Locke flat out asking about Smokey! Great to see that our Survivors aren't always idiots when the time arises to ask questions.

- Thanks to the ABC preview for next week, smart viewers can now figure out who the fourth member of the Oceanic Six is! I won't mention it now in case you didn't watch the preview, but I will say it's someone I was not expecting... but now I pretty much have my predicted six locked in.

What am I missing? I feel like there was so much in that episode, but sitting here and trying to remember it, I'm just left feeling confused by the whole thing. Definitely enjoyed this episode more than last week!

Full analysis soon. Comments now.

http://facethewoods.com/lost/index.php?topic=246.0